I had blogged earlier about the BuildTicker tool which sits on the system tray and notifies of builds happening on the server. I have received many requests to get this tool. So here it goes. Get the executable from here and the sources from here. Since I am no longer working on the TFS team you can consider this as my parting gift :)

Disclaimer

  1. This tool was never formally tested. However it is being used by me everyday.
  2. It comes with no support. In case you hit issues report it in this blog and I'll try to resolve it here.

Features

  1. Does not need TF client to run
  2. Runs from System Tray
  3. Can monitor multiple TF servers and Build Types
  4. Shows pop-ups to notify of builds
  5. Tray animation to indicate successful/failed builds
  6. Integrated to the TF web-ui and you can click it to bring up a Team Build web-report
  7. Auto start(after restarts)

Known Issues

  1. First time you run it, it starts silently in the tray without bringing up the configure dialog.
  2. The pop-up takes away focus (can be majorly irritating when you are typing in some window). However the good news is that after the pop-up closes in a second or two the focus is restored.
  3. The application needs to be restarted sometimes when you change the TF and Build Types it is supposed to monitor
  4. Doesn't maintain the list of builds it has captured till date.

How to use

  1. Unzip to a folder and run the executable
  2. Right click on the Build Ticker icon in the tray and choose Open Build Ticker
  3. Choose Server and enter your server and  build type details
  4. Close the dialog. Sometimes it might be required to restart the application at this point
  5. Start getting notifications

However, I'd recommend that you use the Rss Feed generator and point a windows authentication capable feed-reader like RssBandit to it.